


Only Human

by Mia_writes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bromance, But not dating, Disease, Gen, Illnesses, Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski in Love, POV Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 05:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17892572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_writes/pseuds/Mia_writes
Summary: When the sickness comes, they hardly notice it. It’s soft, like a whisper. Like the shadows they’ve all been seeing anyway. What’s a few more ghosts when you have so many?





	Only Human

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after season 5.

When the sickness comes, they hardly notice it. It’s soft, like a whisper. Like the shadows they’ve all been seeing anyway. What’s a few more ghosts when you have so many?

But then Stiles catches Lydia flinching at sounds he can’t hear, and he realizes that they’re being haunted by something more than their pasts. He puts up his whiteboard and gets to work. Only he doesn’t really have anything to go on, not yet.

And then Liam gets sick.

 

Stiles and Scott and Lydia search for answers, for the source of the mysterious disease. The one that causes hallucinations and paranoia and moodiness. The ones that turns skin yellow and hair brittle and eyes sunken. The ones that makes Liam lose control of his werewolf side.

They find no answers.

And time is running out.

 

Then Scott gets sick.

And it’s like Stiles’ whole world stops. Like his heart stops.

He’s supposed to be the breakable one. He’s supposed to be the one able to get mysterious diseases. He’s supposed to be the one who’s helpless, who’s human.

Except that this time it’s Scott.

And Stiles can’t help but wish that he were the one that was weak.

 

By the time Stiles discovers anything, Liam is chained up in the animal clinic. He’s beyond reason, nothing more than a monster with sharp teeth and glowing yellow eyes. He snaps at everyone that comes near. Hayden and Mason, they don’t care. They love him anyway. They sit on the opposite side of the room, where the chains don’t reach, and they pretend not to notice that he isn’t there anymore. Maybe they truly believe it. They tell him about their day, about lacrosse and Corey and classes. They tell him about how much they love him.

He growls like a wild animal.

But Stiles has found something. Okay, Lydia did most of the work. She’s the one with the brilliant mind between them. She’s the one who’s special.

The disease only affects supernatural creatures. Stiles is safe.

But he doesn’t feel safe when all his friends could die.

“Run,” he tells Lydia. “You have to leave before you get it too.”

She smiles sadly at him. “You need me here.”

He does need her. Not just in the way she thinks. She’s more than her beautiful brains. He needs her for her sharp little comments that keep him in line. He needs her for the way she leads him where he needs to go. He needs her for every comforting look she’s ever given him. He needs her for the way she can make him hold his breath.

He loves her so badly.

“I need you safe,” he argues back.

And maybe it’s something in his eyes. Or maybe Lydia isn’t as fearless as she likes to make everyone believe. Because she purses her lips.

“Two days. I’ll leave in two days.”

And Stiles sags in relief, because at least Lydia will be safe.

 

When he tells Malia to leave, she does.

She’s not heartless though. She’s not the same coyote-girl he met, the one who would so easily leave her friends for dead.

She begs him to go with her—though on Malia begging looks a lot like demanding. Maybe a little threatening. She tells him that there’s nothing they can do for Liam or Scott, that they’re already dying. She says that if they run, then they’ll have a chance to live.

“They need me here,” says Stiles, echoing Lydia’s words.

Malia looks at him for a long moment, like she’s committing his face to memory.

Then she leaves.

 

The thing about the sickness is that they can’t fight it the way they always do. Fangs and claws and screams can’t fight something that’s not tangible. This isn’t a malicious enemy they’re facing. It’s a disease.

Stiles knows diseases. He knows what it’s like to be nine years old and watch your mother die. He knows what it’s like to be helpless in the face of a foe you can’t fight.

But Stiles isn’t nine anymore. And he’s not going to be helpless.

He stares at the old book, at the answers he’s found.

He can save Scott. He can only save one, and so of course it’s Scott. There was never any choice.

It’ll cost him everything. But that’s okay. Scott will be safe.

He’s figured it out. Just like he always does. He’s taken the clues and the mysterious banshee premonitions and he’s turned them into an answer. He’s armed with more than just a baseball bat. He’s armed with sarcasm and wit and the faith of his friends. He’s human, but this has made him stronger than them all.

The burden has never felt so heavy.

Lydia’s two days are up. She approaches him with white skin and red-rimmed eyes. He knows she wants more time. She knows that he won’t give it to her.

She takes a seat next to him. “Did you find anything?”

Stiles closes the book. “No.”

 

Stiles stands over Scott.

He’s asleep on his couch. That’s another thing the disease does: sap away all his energy.

Stiles watches him, and he sees another moment. It seems like it’s a lifetime away now. The time Scott looked at him with all the world’s pain in his eyes, convinced he needed to end his own life.

Through all the monsters they’d faced and all the nightmares they’ve seen, nothing has scared Stiles more than that moment.

He remembers stepping into the gasoline. With a Scott who wasn’t in control of himself and could have easily burned them both to death.

He hadn’t doubted his decision for a second. He had had a chance to save Scott. It might have killed him. But it was worth the risk. What was life without Scott anyway?

_“Scott, you’re my best friend. Okay? I need you. Scott, you’re my brother. Alright, so…so if you’re gonna do this then you’re just gonna have to take me with you.”_

He presses his fingers to Scott’s temples. And he does just what the book says. He clears his mind of every thought expect for saving Scott. He makes a little space in his mind, something that can be filled. Part of him thrills with fear, because he’s had something in his mind once and he still has nightmares about what he did.

But he pushes those aside too.

Then he reaches into Scott’s mind, and tugs. He accepts the madness. He accepts the disease.

And as it attacks his mind, all he can think is that he has saved Scott.

Then he blacks out.

 

Scott wakes up with a howl.

He wakes up and he sees his best friend on the floor beside him, eyes shut. He listens for a heartbeat, hears his own heart stutter in fear, then finds Stiles’s. It’s weak.

He’s dying.

He’s dying, and Scott feels awake for the first time in days. He doesn’t feel weak anymore. Doesn’t feel sick anymore.

There’s a book beside Stiles and Scott brushes his fingers over the open page. Tears form in his eyes. Stiles took the madness from him.

Stiles gave his life to save Scott.

He took the madness from Scott, even when that’s the death that Scott knows he’s always feared the most. Not kanimas or alpha packs or darachs. But madness. Disease.

Stiles never wanted to die the way his mother did.

Scott remembers the day in the hospital when Stiles was having an MRI done. When they thought he had frontotemporal dementia, the same thing his mother had had. When the Nogitsune had played all of them, tortured them with the wounds that even time couldn’t fully heal.

He remembers the calm tone Stiles had used as he explained the disease. It had been in such sharp contrast with the fear in his eyes. Yet perfectly in line with the defeat written in his slumped shoulders.

Scott remembers the little exchange they’d had, dancing around the obvious solution to Stiles’s problem.

_Stiles, if you have it, we’ll do something. I’ll do something._

And then Stiles had looked up, question in his eyes, and Scott had nodded. And Stiles had nodded back, accepting the solution.

And just like that, Scott knows that he’s going to try.

Maybe it will fail. But he can hear Stiles’s pulse faltering and his breaths slowing and it’s not like he can make it worse.

And maybe Stiles doesn’t want it. Maybe Stiles will hate him.

But if Stiles is alive to hate him, then Scott will be happy.

He kneels beside Stiles.

It’s awkward. He’s never done this on purpose before and he’s terrified, and even if it’s awful he wishes he could be trying this on a stranger and not his best friend.

But it is Stiles in front of him, and Scott is Stiles’s last change.

He takes Stiles’s arm and wolfs out. He knows his eyes are red, his fangs out. He looks like a monster from a story.

But Stiles never saw him as a monster. Not even when Scott tried to kill him. Not even when Scott kissed Lydia, which might rank worse than trying to kill him in Stiles’s book.

Scott lifts his fangs to Stiles’s wrist.

And he sinks them in.

 

Stiles can hear a heartbeat. Labored breaths. Fingers tapping against skin.

Everything is so loud.

Stiles opens his eyes and Scott is there.

Stiles never expected to open his eyes again.

But Scott’s there and he looks worried. His eyes are wet and there’s something red at the corner of his mouth.

“Stiles.”

“Scott?”

Because it doesn’t make sense. Stiles was meant to die. As a human, immune, he could take the disease willingly to save Scott’s life, because sacrifice is always the cost of magic.

Stiles should be dead.

“Stiles, are you okay?”

And Stiles knows. He knows exactly what Scott has done. He was willing to pay any price to save Scott, and he knows Scott feels no differently about him. They’re brothers.

Stiles finds the pain and lifts his wrist to see red half-circles.

So he’s a werewolf now.

“I’m sorry,” says Scott.

Of course Scott would be sorry. He never wanted to be a wolf. But Stiles remembers a night so long ago, in a parking lot with Peter, and he remembers how his heart skipped a beat.

Maybe he’s always wanted it.

But if he hadn’t been human, he wouldn’t have been able to save Scott. To pour mountain ash. To be the functional, level head on full moons.

Maybe there are some things Stiles will miss about being human.

Maybe he only ever thought he wanted to be something more.

“Are you mad?” asks Scott. “Do you hate me?”

Part of Stiles wishes he could be human again. Now that he can catch the disease as well, they’ll have to leave Beacon Hills. Maybe they’ll find Lydia.

He doesn’t want to face Hayden and Mason as he tells them that he saved Scott but can’t save Liam.

He’ll never see his home again.

“Stiles?” asks Scott.

Stiles knows Scott well enough to hear the question in his name.

_Are you mad? Do you hate me? Do you blame me for taking away your humanity?_

“No,” says Stiles.

And he hears his heart skip a beat.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are always appreciated.


End file.
